mollivan webtech: blog

GIS on Macs

Category: GIS; Category: Mac

Now, I'm no GIS expert. I say that upfront. I'm about as green as they come. But I see the usefulness of GIS and peer jealously over the shoulders of people using ArcGIS on Windows at work. Not too jealously, though, because the PCs in our lab keep seizing up running GIS because they're too cheap and nasty. I also haven't been impressed with the intuitiveness of the user interface of ArcGIS, despite its long list of functions (note that our work network is probably not running the latest version). All this means that I have wanted to get GIS going on my Mac for some time.

I started with ESRI’s ArcExplorer Java Edition for Education, a free program from the makers of ArcGIS. Running in Java, it allows me to open shape files and do a limited amount of manipulation to make maps. It is useful enough but is a bit clunky in its performance and user-interface. Plus, it can only export raster (pixellated) images (and even that doesn't seem to be working on OSX 10.4). If I'm building a figure for a publication, I'd really like to get a vector image out to edit further in my nemesis of unintuitiveness, Adobe Illustrator.

With all this in mind, I have started tinkering around with the monster of opensource GIS projects, GRASS on X11. So far so good, but it looks like it will take a serious committment on my part to learn enough to be proficient at it. I'm not certain yet whether I will use GRASSS frequently enough to keep all those details fresh in my head. I have a Mac mind afterall. I am supposed to be abe to push obvious buttons and see stuff just work.

I was pleased to discover earlier this week a program called QGIS (short for Quantum GIS), another opensource GIS project (qgis.org). It runs natively on OSX as well as most other operating systems, and appears to at least be the equal of ArcExplorer, from my limited playing. It can use data and layers from a wide range of formats and claims to play nicely with GRASS (I say "claims" only because I haven't had a chance to try this out).

I stumbled across QGIS after my frustration with being unable to get a vector image (or any image!) exported out of ArcExplorer. I was hopeful QGIS would allow me to do this, since QGIS includes SVG as a vector format for exporting maps (accessible in its print window). Alas, the vector lines in the resulting file were weird and chunky, like some vector version of a raster image. Maybe there is some way around this, although the online help is currently too limited to suggest anything. Still, this is not a criticism. The project has got a lot of primise. QGIS is at version 0.7.4 at the time of writing and looks like it is well worth keeping an eye on.

There's a useful review comparing QGIS with ArcExplorer Java Edition over at lordkingsquirrel.com/2006/04/12/desktop-mapping-software-qgis-v-arcexplorer-java-edition/.

A little AppleScript to automate splitting pdfs

Category: LaTeX; Category: TeXShop; Category: FileMaker Pro; Category: AppleScript; Category: Mac

Summary: In which Jon surprises himself by writing a working AppleScript that takes LaTeX code from records of a FileMaker Pro database and transfers the code to TeXShop for typesetting. The outcome is a few long PDF files being automatically divided into many smaller, annotated PDF files divided at page numbers specified in the database.

I've never really figured out AppleScript, Apple's English-like scripting language. It looks so simple and easy, yet I haven't come across a simple and easy set of instructions and examples I can use to get into the language. One of these days I may have to have to break down and *buy* a book on the subject. The little example I describe here should illustrate how useful AppleScript can be, and why a little more learning on my part could save me a lot of time in the long run.

At the moment Laura and I are getting all the backissues of the journal Notornis ready for publishing online (launch due June 2006). The Ornithological Society of New Zealand has provided us with PDF files of all backissues of Notornis, one file per issue, with an underlying layer of error-ridden computer-read OCR text. One of our jobs is to get all the citation information for all the articles in all these issues (yawn). Luckily that job has been sped up somewhat by the existence of a 50-year index (although all of that computer-read text still needed proof-reading). Another job now is to split up all the issue PDF files into separate article PDF files. We are certainly not going to do all that by hand for >3,000 articles!

Here's what I've come up with, using AppleScript to combine our citation information in a FileMaker Pro database with the awesome PDF handling capabilities of the LaTeX typesetting language, specifically the package pdfpages as applied within the glorious TeXShop application. There will undoubtedly be all sorts of ways of doing this and I don't claim that my solution is the best. I tend to get something working then move on to the next thing.

The following LaTeX file, when typeset in TeXShop, creates a PDF file of the same name that contains only the selected pages of the original PDF.

\documentclass[11pt,a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage[final]{pdfpages}

\usepackage[pdftex,colorlinks]{hyperref}
\hypersetup{%
pdftitle={Title of the Notornis article},
pdfauthor={Ornithological Society of New Zealand},
pdfsubject={Notornis Volume(issue) year, \copyright Ornithological Society of New Zealand},
pdfkeywords={Notornis, New Zealand, birds},
bookmarksnumbered,
pdfstartview={FitH},
urlcolor=cyan,
}%

\begin{document}

\includepdf[pages=2-4]{/Users/jon/NZES/Salisbury/OSNZpart/VOLUME_49-2002/Notornis_49_1.pdf}

\end{document}

There are a few things to note here. The pdfpages package contains the includepdf function that drives everything. The hyperref package is optional. I use it to add annotations to the pdf files (which can been seen with Document Properties in Acrobat Reader and Get Info in the OSX 10.4 version of Preview). Within the includepdf line, note that the pages to be extracted are specified and the path to the PDF file is specified. The ".pdf" extension on the end of the filename in this path is optional. It is important that there are no spaces in the path to the file. (I also found out that you need OSX 10.4 for this to handle PDF files greater than version 1.4.)

Once I had this working, the trick was to automate it for >3,000 articles, one for each record in our FileMaker Pro database of citation information. The first step was to make a field in FileMaker which will generate the above code for each record. Here is the calculation that does this, for a field I called "LaTeX".

"\documentclass[11pt,a4paper]{article}¶
\usepackage{graphicx}¶
\usepackage[final]{pdfpages}¶
¶
\usepackage[pdftex,colorlinks]{hyperref}¶
\hypersetup{%¶
pdftitle={" & title & "},¶
pdfauthor={" & authors & "},¶
pdfsubject={Notornis " & volume_issue_bracketed & ":" & first_page & "--" & last_page & " (" & publications::pub_year & ") \copyright Ornithological Society of New Zealand, Inc.},¶
pdfkeywords={" & If ( IsEmpty ( keywords ) ; "" ; Substitute ( keywords ; ";" ; "," ) ) & ", Ornithological Society of New Zealand, Notornis, Science Journal, New Zealand, birds},¶
bookmarksnumbered,¶
pdfstartview={FitH},¶
urlcolor=cyan,¶
}%¶
¶
\begin{document}¶

¶
\includepdf[pages=" & first_page & "-" & last_page & "]{/Users/jon/NZES/Salisbury/OSNZpart/" & pdf_issue_folder & "/" & pdf_issue_filename & "}¶
¶
\end{document}"

You will see that this is nothing more than the above LaTeX code with values included from the database fields. Easy.

The trick then was to automatically typeset this code for each record of the database. The following AppleScript, written in Apple's ScriptEditor, typesets the code from one record of the database.

tell application "FileMaker Pro"
set mylatex to cell "LaTeX" of current record as styled text
set filename to cell "pdf_filename_trimmed" of current record as styled text
end tell

tell application "TeXShop"
activate
make new document at beginning with properties {name:filename}
set the text of document filename to mylatex
close document filename saving in file ("Salisbury:Users:jon:NZES:Salisbury:OSNZpart:" & filename & ".tex") saving yes
open file ("Salisbury:Users:jon:NZES:Salisbury:OSNZpart:" & filename & ".tex")
typeset document (filename & ".tex")
close document (filename & ".tex") saving no
end tell

AppleScript is so cleverly close to English that this doesn't really need explaining. It works, and it's blink-of-an-eye quick, even on my old 600MHz G3 iBook.

That didn't make it easy to write though. My first head-banging session was when I tried to export the LaTeX field from FileMaker into a text file to then be opened by TeXShop. Try as I might, I couldn't get FileMaker to output a clean, simple text file with unix linebreaks that TeXShop could use. Giving up on that approach, I then realised that I could manually copy-and-paste clean code from FileMaker into TeXShop. The above AppleScript is written to do this. I then took a while to realise that "styled text" was essential for the line breaks in the LaTeX code to be retained in the copy-and-paste (really a set-and-set maneuver in AppleScript). Once I'd got over this major hurdle, it took me surprisingly, frustratingly long on Google to figure out how to save the TeXShop document I created so I could typeset it. The code is still a bit clutzy here, since I could only figure out how to save the file by closing it. The AppleScript then has to open it again to typeset it.

Running this script (e.g., via a button in FileMaker) takes the code of the current database record to TeXShop, typesets it, and closes the new TeXShop file. This produces a PDF file of the appropriate pages (with the specified annotations). Nice.

That was the hard part, which I've only just finished. Looping the database to do this for each record should be a simple little FileMaker script. I'll add that here once I've done it. But first, we have to finish the citation database.

Dude, why the blog?

Category: Blah blah

There are lots of excellent and huge websites out there containing all sorts of top notch information about building websites and using computers. I do not claim that this is one or will ever become one. In fact, it only exists because I'm lazy and altruistic (mostly lazy).

Rather than comment on and participate in the excellent tech blogs out there, I've decided at a minimum to just dump in this blog all the mistakes I'd rather not repeat (and some clever tricks). In the past, I've saved all this stuff as text files in my "How to..." folder on my Hard Drive. That still works fine, but this blog should work just as well, and with a blog, it means all manner of other folk out there have the chance to stumble across my notes and maybe find something of use.

I looked into WordPress and TextPattern, both of which look great, but in the end I need something as easy to set up and use as possible (remember the bit about my being lazy). Hence blogger. Free, easy, and elegant. I've also looked into some clever hacks for making blogger do categories, but figure that for the moment it should work well enough just writing a category at the top of each section. That way if I want to see all my posts on tips for using R, for example, I can search my blog for "Category: R" and be happy.

Serving a website on an old iMac

Category: Mac, Category: Server, Category: Websites

Originally posted on my iBlog 8 January 2005.

Summary: I've just set up our old 300MHz slot-loading G3 iMac as a server running OSX 10.3.9 over our TelstraClear cable broadband connection as one of several computers on an AirPort wireless network. The tricky bit (less tricky when I'd figured it out) was serving several website domain names from our one static IP address. Here are my notes on how this was done. Perhaps it's of use to one of you excellent people in web land.

A clean start
I decided to start everything from scratch, since our iMac (named Rinchen Barsbold) has had a long and hard life before becoming a server. First, I erased the hard drive with DiskUtility. Panther (OSX 10.3) was reinstalled and updated to 10.3.9. BBEdit was installed as my preferred text editor. To save space on our 10GB hard drive, all printer drivers were deleted (from /Library/Printers/). Superfluous Apple applications were removed (iMovie, iPhoto, etc.). Monolingual (monolingual.sourceforge.net/) was run to remove all language files except English, Australian English, and US English. Well over a GB was saved, just like that.

Start web sharing
Making the iMac a server is dead simple in OSX. In the Sharing control panel of System Preferences, turn on Personal Web Sharing. That's it! This starts Apache, the most popular open-source web server software, which is automatically built in to OSX. While in the Sharing control panel, I also named the computer again and turned on Personal File Sharing (so I can access the iMac from inside our wireless network) and Remote Login (so I can access it from work).

I also clicked on Firewall tab in the Sharing panel and started the firewall. All ports will be shut to external traffic except those involved in the above sharing.

In System Preferences/Network, the TCP/IP computer is set to DHCP. This gets the IP address and other connection information from our AirPort Express wireless base station. My iMac got given the IP address 10.0.1.4. (We plug our broadband cable modem ethernet cable into this little gadget from Apple and our Macs can all surf the web at once. Pretty cool. We also have our stereo plugged into the Airport Express so we can play our iTunes music through our stereo wirelessly. More cool.) The IP address 10.0.1.4 just happened to be the IP address the Airport Express had dynamically given the iMac when I was setting this up. There's nothing magical about it. Just make sure the your server has the same IP address as you set in Airport Admin Utility to receive external web traffic (details on that are below). Before continuing, I switched over the Network from "Using DHCP" to "Manually", retaining the same network settings, so that if I ever had to restart the iMac or reset the Airport, this internal network IP address of 10.0.1.4 would be retained.

I also went into the Energy Saver control panel of System Preferences and changed the computer to never sleep and for the screen to dim immediately (the hard drive can still spin down when not in use). I didn't want our sever caught snoozing when someone wants to visit our website.

Set up Airport Admin Utility
Airport Admin Utility is an application in the Utilities folder of the Applications folder. I won't go through the settings for getting Airport set up in case there are security issues in making this information public. It was simple with the info from our broadband provider. The important point is that we get a single static IP address (a number of the form 123.45.67.89) which is the physical address of our network on the web.

The other trick to set up port mapping so requests from afar for normal internet ports get directed to our iMac server (and not one of our other Macs which might be on the wireless network at the time). Remember that the iMac has the IP address of 10.0.1.4 inside our wireless network. So we use the Port Mapping window to direct all web traffic through the standard internet ports to this IP address. (Note that I've masked out the numbers for safety.)

Now, typing http://123.45.67.89 (or whatever your IP address is) into Safari (or your favourite web browser) will bring up Apache's default webpage. This will happen from anywhere in the world. I was now serving a website, but I wasn't quite there yet.

Domain name registration
Of course, http://123.45.67.89 isn't much of a web address. I went to www.domains4less.co.nz and bought the domain names I wanted. I got mollivan.com, canterburynature.org, and canterburynature.org.nz. My plan was to serve two websites from the iMac, our own website (www.mollivan.com ) and a prototype for a community website on nature in the Canterbury region (which I wanted both addresses to point to).

Now here's where I got a little confused. As it's name suggests, www.domains4less.co.nz specialises in selling cheap domain names. While it allows you to direct your purchased domain name to another existing website, it doesn't allow you to set its domain name servers to point your new name to your own IP address (at least I couldn't find anywhere on its site that would allow me to do this properly). In my website dealings, I hadn't struck this before and it took me a while to figure out how to get around this. What I could do was use their URL direct settings to automatically direct anybody who typed in www.canterburynature.org.nz to www.canterburynature.org.

As a perhaps useful aside, note that some odd stuff happened before I figured out that URL redirects are not equivalent to a proper name server. For example, when I redirected www.mollivan.com to our IP address, and then typed www.mollivan.com into Safari, I would see the correct default OSX webpage. But when I tried to then navigate into a folder ("bob") that I created within the default OSX web Documents folder, by surfing to www.mollivan.com/bob/ I would get the following webpage warning:

Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /bob/ on this server.

It took me ages to realise that this wasn't due to faulty permissions on my folder, or the folders it was inside (this was the solution mentioned on websites I found when googling this warning). Instead, it seems to be because the iMac server didn't know what to do with http://www.mollivan.com/bob/ request. I figured out this by temporarily redirecting to the iMac another domain name I had access to from another domain name company. Unlike www.domains4less.co.nz, the website of this company (www.discountdomains.co.nz) allowed me to set my IP address in their name server. In this case, the index.html file inside Bob loaded fine without warning.

The solution I took was to go to www.everyDNS.net ("DNS for the rest of us"), which offers free use of its domain name servers (thanks!). There are several free DNS services out there. From my googling, everyDNS seemed like a good combination of ease-of-use and competence. I registered (free!) and set up both www.mollivan.com and www.canterburynature.org to point to the static IP address of our broadband cable modem (e.g., 123.45.67.89, not my real address).

My everyDNS settings for mollivan.com (real IP address replaced with 123.45.67.89) were:

*.mollivan.com A 123.45.67.89
mollivan.com A 123.45.67.89

The asterisk (*.mollivan.com) means that any other web address I set up inside mollivan.com (e.g., jon.mollivan.com) will also be directed automatically to our IP address.

I did the same for canterburynature.org.

The everyDNS.net website gives the names of their name servers (e.g., ns1.everydns.net). So I then went back to the www.domains4less.co.nz website and entered two of these name servers in as the master and slave external name servers for my domain names. Domains4less required IP addresses for the name servers as well as their names. The everyDNS.net website only gave the names. So I looked up the IP address for these name server addresses using the "whois" function of Network Utility (another useful Apple application in the Utilities folder of the Applications folder).

Then I waited. I had read on the web that it can take 24-48 hours for DNS changes to filter through the web. Indeed, it was about a day later when typing my domain names into Safari took me to my default OSX webpage.

Using virtual hosting in Apache to host several domain names from one IP address
"Virtual hosts" can be used in Apache to direct visitors of different domain names to different folders within a computer with a single IP address. This turned out to be quite simple to do. But I only figured that out after following a number of complicated false leads that dealt with using virtual hosts to allow you to type in a domain name into Safari while off-line and test out a website in development.

The solution is based on Scenario Two in the useful ONLamp.com article by Russell Dyer titled "Simplify Your Life with Apache Virtual Hosts " (www.onlamp.com/pub/a/apache/2003/07/24/vhosts.html).

Remember that Apache is the open-source application that runs the web server in OSX. Its settings are contained in the hidden file, httpd.conf, which is found in etc/httpd/ folder (i.e., in your Mac computer above your user directory). Note that this is hidden. Try to browse there in the Finder and you won't even find the "etc" folder. Macs conveniently hide a lot of these things, I guess in part to stop regular users like me from screwing things up. So what are you supposed to do?

There are several solutions. My favourite is to use BBEdit , quite possibly the best text editor in the world. You can open hidden files (File:Open Hidden...). So I use BBEdit to open httpd.conf and make the necessary changes to the settings. When opening in BBEdit, the default will be set to open All Readable Files. You might need to switch this to All Files since at least my version of BBEdit (7.1.4) does not recognize files with the extension ".conf" by default.

I changed two things in this file.

# DocumentRoot "/Library/WebServer/Documents"
DocumentRoot "/Users/mollivan/Sites"

Here I comment out the first of these lines (search for it in the file) and add the second line below it. This switches the computer website from the folder Documents to the Sites folder inside the mollivan User. This way, if I ever set up another user on the iMac, the websites will still only be server from inside the mollivan user.

Next, I went right to the bottom of the file and added the following lines.

Listen 80
NameVirtualHost *

ServerName www.mollivan.com
DocumentRoot /Users/mollivan/Sites/mollivan

ServerName www.canterburynature.org
DocumentRoot /Users/mollivan/Sites/canterburynature

Russell Dyer's article explains well what all this code is doing. In summary, it says that when requests are received at port 80 (the usual port for website requests), the website shown will depend on which web address the user has typed in. Requests for www.mollivan.com are directed to the mollivan folder inside the Sites folder. Requests for www.canterbury.org are directed to the canterburynature folder inside the Sites folder. The homepages for each site are the index.html files inside each of these folders. (In my case with only a single IP address, the asterisk (*) in this code could be replaced by my IP address.)

Once done, save the file and restart Apache by going to System Preferences:Sharing and turning Personal Web Sharing on and off (or you can use the command sudo apachectl restart in Terminal).

If you don't have BBEdit, you can also use Terminal to make all these changes, especially if you are comfortable with UNIX. Terminal is the application in the Utilities Folder of the Applications folder that allows you to interact with the rock-solid UNIX core of OSX. In a Terminal window, type the following commands.

cd /etc/httpd/

this changes the directory to httpd (the hidden folder)

sudo emacs httpd.conf

this opens the file http.conf in the text editor emacs, included inside OSX. Sudo allows you to access places you shouldn't otherwise go (you'll need to have administrative rights on your computer and you'll have to enter your password).

Scroll down inside emacs and make the above changes. Use ctrl-x ctrl-s to save your changes and ctrl-x ctrl-c to close emacs.

Then restart Apache as above.

That's it!
When I did all that, my iMac as happily serving two different websites from the same static IP address through our home broadband connection.

My next steps are to turn on PHP and install MySQL and PHPMyAdmin to add some dynamic features to my websites. But that's a different story.

MS Word "red X" problem solved! (if you don't want to use EndNote)

Category: Mac, Category: MS Word

Originally posted on my iBlog 11 April 2005 (for interest only; I've since moved to TeXShop with NeoOffice to open Word files).

Summary: When I open some .doc files sent to me by my Windows colleagues on MS Word X, I am greeted with a giant red "X" where many figures are supposed to be. Which figures get X-ed and which come through fine is completely haphazard. This has driven me mad for years. I just figured out how to stop it, after several failed google searches. Here's how.

The trick for me was to removed the EndNote plug-in from the Microsoft Office X:Office:Startup:Word folder. When this was gone, all figures previously displaying as red X's displayed properly.

Luckily I haven't been using EndNote (I have been writing the drafts of my papers in TextEdit to avoid the mind-scrambling vagaries of Word---is it any better on Windows?).

Text excerpt from http://www.mcgimpsey.com/macoffice/word/xredx.html.

Here's the text of a post on 19 November 2003 by Microsoft's MacBU:

To all our MacWord X customers:

We have been receiving reports about the inability of Word X to display
graphics in certain documents, and instead showing a "Red X". This is an
expected occurrence when the Word cannot display the graphic, due to lack of
memory, lack of a required graphic converter or corrupt image.

We have investigated the reports and have identified 2 scenarios where "Red
X's" would appear unexpectedly:

Problem: Documents created or modified in MacWord X display "Red X's" when
opened up in Word version 2002 for Windows (or earlier).
Solution: Word version 2002 for Windows is currently missing a graphic
filter that enables it to display certain graphics added or modified in
MacWord X. This graphic filter will be available as part of a Service Pack
update from Office Update sometime after January 2004. This graphic filter
is already included as part of the Word 2003 for Windows install.

Problem: Documents opened in MacWord X will sometimes display graphics as
"Red X's".

Solution: We have identified a conflict with certain built-in & 3rd party
components and Word. Plug-ins such as Endnote as well as built-in items
like Camera and Scanner Plug-in will cause this issue when they are
loaded. Endnote is loaded automatically when Word is launched, while Camera
and Scanner Plug-in loads when selecting it from the Insert | Picture
sub-menu. This issue can also occur in Mac Word 2001.

In order to work-around this issue one must not load these plug-ins and
disable those that start automatically by temporarily removing them from the
Microsoft Office X:Office:Startup:Word folder. We currently do not have an
update to Word X that addresses this issue directly.

Another item to note is that if you run into either of these issues, the
integrity of the graphics will remain and even though Word will be unable to
display the images, they will be saved with the document correctly.

Matt Centurion
Macintosh Business Unit – Microsoft
Mactopia@microsoft.com

--
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Adding my contact details to my OSX login screen

Category: Mac

Originally posted on my iBlog 3 April 2005.

Summary: This is a great tip from MacWorld. It explains how to add your address and other contact details to the login screen of OSX. That's useful if my iBook gets lost (or stolen).

http://www.macworld.com/2005/03/secrets/mayosxhints/index.php

The trick is to edit the Aqua Blue.jpg file in the /Library/Desktop Pictures folder.

FileMaker Relationship and Portal tips

Category: Mac, Category: FileMaker Pro

Originally posted on my iBlog 8 January 2005.

Summary: These are some notes on my first attempts to set up portals in FileMaker Pro 7. Don't treat this as gospel. I'm still playing with this stuff.

Body: Portals allow the many related records to be displayed in rows within a layout of the original table. The portal should contain fields from the related table. New records in the related table can be created in the portal if "Allow creation of records in this table via this relationship" is turned on in the relationship between the tables (in the Relationships graph of File:Define...:Database").

******************

To prevent a field from being altered in Browse mode (for example, if you want to only allow users to enter a value into the field using a script), in Layout mode, select Field:Field Behaviour... and turn off the option to enter in Browse mode. Keep the option to enter in Find mode.

In the NatureObserver (prototype name) project, I use this option to create new datasets for a datasource, inside a portal in a layout in the datasource table. This way, if the user deletes dataset 3 of 5, they are unable to renumber the remaining datasets manually. They are forced to live with a set of records with dataset numbers 1,2,4, and 5. This is essential for relationships not to be disrupted.

******************

Deleting a row from a portal (i.e., the related record in the related table is deleted) has a potentially dangerous twist. Keep the "Delete records in this table when a record is deleted in the other table" option turned off, unless you want to start a chain of related record deletions moving up the relationships.

When forming the relationships between tables in the database (and between databases), be very careful about setting the options to create and delete records in each side of the relationship from the location of the related record. You access these options when setting up a relationship, or by double-clicking on the page icon for a relationship between two tables on the Relationships graph.

I took some time to solve a mystery of why, when I deleted one dataset (of several from one datasource), I also mysteriously deleted the datasource record for that dataset and the full citation record for that datasource. This happened because FileMaker followed up a chain of selected "Delete records in this table when a record is deleted in the other table" options. It general, it is important to have this option always turned off. However, the reverse option, "Allow creation of records in this table via this relationship" can be very useful, and I am tending to turn it on by default. It is necessary for creating new records from within a portal.

******************

The following is copied from the file "ManyMany PortalScript", dated 4 January 2005

The following set of scripts moves from a portal row in Table 1 to the related record in a Join Table and then to the related record in Table 2. The next three scripts move backwards to the original portal row. Scripts applied from a description at http://dbforums.com/t349224.html.

This system of Table1-Join-Table2 is apparently the best way to set up a many-many relationship in FileMaker Pro (in effect, by fusing a many-one and one-many relationship). I'm still missing the step of how to extend this simple example (one-one-one) to the many-many situation.

These scripts are working in my trial database, PortalManyManyTest.fp7.

First
Set Field [ Table1::GlobalNumber; Get(PortalRowNumber) ]
Go to Related Record [ From table: "JoinTable"; Using layout: "JoinTable" (JoinTable) ]
Perform Script [ "Join" ]

Join
Go to Related Record [ From table: "Table2"; Using layout: "Table2" (Table2) ]
Perform Script [ "Second" ]

Second
Go to Field [ JoinTable::ID2 ]
[ Select/perform ]

And back again...

SecondReturn
Go to Related Record [ From table: "JoinTable"; Using layout: "JoinTable" (JoinTable) ]
Perform Script [ "JoinReturn" ]

JoinReturn
Go to Related Record [ From table: "Table1"; Using layout: "Table1" (Table1) ]
Perform Script [ "FirstReturn" ]

FirstReturn
Go to Portal Row [ Table1::GlobalNumber ]
[ Select; No dialog ]

******************
I have scripted the addition of new datasets in the portal in the datasource table layout, as follows.

"Add a new Dataset in same DataSource from DataSource portal"
Set Field [ DataSource::global number; 0 ]
Go to Portal Row
[ Select; Last ]
Go to Portal Row
[ Select; Previous ]
Copy [ DataSets::Dataset_number ]
[ Select ]
Paste [ DataSource::global number ]
[ Select ]
Go to Portal Row
[ Select; Last ]
Set Field [ DataSets::Dataset_number; DataSource::global number + 1 ]

Note that since I am allowing the creation of new records from within the portal, the last row is blank, for new record creation.

I didn't want the user to see the global number, so I removed the field from this layout. But then the script stopped working. It turns out that it must be on the layout of the script. So instead I changed its text to white (and no border) to disappear from view.

[In the end, this proved unsuitable, and I decided to use a unique per-record dataset ID, which is auto-entered when the user starts to enter data on the last (new) row of the portal.]

Note to self: Periodically save compressed copies of my FileMaker databases

Category: Mac, Category: FileMaker Pro

Originally posted on my iBlog 6 January 2005.

Summary: I find out all sorts of things by accident (I'm not the manual reading kind of person). Hence tips like this one are things I stumble across and then gaze at in wonder.

Periodically save a compressed copy of the database. Then trash the original and rename the copy with the exact name of the original. After structural changes is a good time to do this. Otherwise, every few months. If the compressed copy is significantly smaller, it was time to compress. If there's little difference, then wait a bit longer before the next compression.

FileMaker Pro 7: wrestling with when File and System Date and Time Formats are different

Category: Mac, Category: FileMaker Pro

Originally posted on my iBlog 6 January 2005.

Summary: Like a lot of good software, FileMaker Pro is designed in the US. As such, it is built in a world of such wacky standards as US Letter page size and a date format that goes month/day/year. FileMaker databases seem to take on the date format of the computer on which they were built, which means US format for the default templates. As a kiwi who uses a sensible, hierarchical date format, this can cause a few problems. Here's how I get around this.

If you get a warning each time a database is opened, saying the system and file date and time formats are different, it is because the system settings on the computer at the time the database was created differ from the current settings.

For example, this has happened to me with FMPro databases I made while in the US but now use in NZ. I've discovered in FMPro7 (and it may apply to earlier versions also) that all the templates that come with the program were made in the US and so have the wacky US date system built in as their default. I get the warning every time I open such a file, which is hardly ideal! One fix, from FMPro Help, is to force the database to always adopt the System settings of the computer it is being opened on, without asking. To do this, Select File:File Options. In the Text window, there are options for Data Entry when current System settings differ from saved settings. Click to use "Always use current system settings".